Rail, trail backers spar over route in Adirondacks

In this July 26 photo, Dick Beamish of Saranac Lake, a member of the Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates, points out a deteriorating section of railroad tracks on a causeway across Lake Clear in Saranac Lake. (AP photo)

SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. -- Dick Beamish looks at the rotting railroad ties on the causeway across Lake Clear and imagines them gone, replaced by a smooth 90-mile trail beckoning through the heart of the Adirondack Mountains.

But railroad enthusiasts are equally passionate about a different vision, one that has bikers and hikers enjoying a trail alongside renovated tracks carrying train passengers on a scenic tour of mountain vistas between whistle-stop towns teeming with tourists.

The rail-trail debate, which is not unlike one that is ongoing in Ulster County, has simmered in New York's northern mountains for decades, and railroad buffs long held the upper hand because state officials had no interest in revisiting a 1995 management plan that favored keeping the stretch as a historic railroad corridor.

But that could be changing. Under pressure from trail advocates and local communities, state officials have agreed to public hearings on what to do with the state-owned corridor from Old Forge in the southwestern Adirondacks to Lake Placid in the northeastern region.

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"We hope to convert this largely unused section of the rail corridor into a world-class, year-round, multiuse recreational trail that will become a major tourist destination," said Beamish, a leader of the Adirondack recreational Trail Advocates.

The question of the best use of the rail corridor, which cuts through a prime swath of one of the nation's most popular parks, comes at a time when Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to promote more tourism upstate.

The tracks run 119 miles from Utica in central New York to Lake Placid in the High Peaks region of the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park. The Adirondack Scenic Railroad, operated mostly by volunteers, runs from Utica to Old Forge and between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. But the 80-mile stretch between Old Forge and Saranac Lake is in rough shape and would require major work to support passenger service. Cost estimates range from $25 million to $43 million.

At hearings expected to be scheduled later this summer or fall, the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society and Adirondack North Country Association will argue that an upgraded rail corridor with a new recreational trail alongside would provide the best of both worlds.

"Destroying our past and limiting our future is not in the best interest of the region," Bethany Maher of the preservation group wrote in response to the state's decision to revisit the rail corridor plan. She called the railroad "a piece of living and functioning utilitarian history, a protected historic landmark, which allows people of all walks of life to experience the beauty and thrill of the region."

The Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates, formed in 2011, will argue for removing the tracks and creating a multiuse recreational trail. Beamish said the rail-with-trail option put forth by rail enthusiasts would be impractical and prohibitively expensive, considering the numerous lakes and wetlands along the route. The cost of a trail, on the other hand, would be largely recouped by selling the ripped-up rails as scrap metal, Beamish said.

Lee Keet of Saranac Lake, co-founder of the pro-trail group, said rail trails in other parts of the country have proved to be economic boons.

Northern Pennsylvania's 62-mile-long Pine Creek Rail Trail, which winds through a scenic gorge often called the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, has attracted so many bicyclists, paddlers, anglers and hikers that its board declined a national award for fear the trail and villages along the route would be overwhelmed with traffic, said Jim Weaver, planning director in Tioga County, Pa.

Keet said removing the rails and creating a rail-trail would give the Adirondack Park a new and valuable attraction in wilderness areas that already attract vacationers from around the U.S. and Canada. It would allow bicyclists to traverse some of the wildest lands in the East, crossing the Five Pond Wilderness and skirting Lake Lila in the Whitney Wilderness -- areas of evergreen forests, bogs, lakes and streams now accessible only by hiking or paddling.

Rail advocates have worked for years to raise money to upgrade the rails so the tourist train can continue past thriving Old Forge to struggling Tupper Lake. Trail promoters and snowmobile enthusiasts argue that removing the rails would bring far more business than a train would. That's because high-spending snowmobilers, who have made Old Forge a winter mecca, are eager to travel up the railroad corridor but usually avoid it because the rails are too bumpy.

"We are convinced that this trail is going to be the backbone for the revival of that entire corridor between Old Forge and Saranac Lake," Keet said. "I think the logic is completely on our side."